During the Children's Message she taught "Alleluia" and "Jesus loves you" in sign language to the children and encouraged them to sign and say it to the congregation.
For her sermon she focused on Mark 3:21, "When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying 'He has gone out of his mind'" particularly the phrase gone out of his mind. Pastor Mary equated it to saying crazy. She stressed there were two meanings that crazy has for us today. One is positive, essentially saying someone is extremely enthusiastic like "I'm crazy for jazz". The other is judgmental about mental derangement as in "Stella went crazy and assaulted a visitor."
Hope and love can be inspired be the scripture. Judgment is there throughout as well. The scripture is filled with cognitive dissonance and the Gospel today demonstrates these opposed ideas in juxtaposition dramatically. Today's Gospel contains love and offers hope in some verses but has some incredibly difficult judgment passages as well. First there is the scribes judgment on Jesus:
Mark 3:22 'And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, "He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons."'
The response Jesus gives astonishes in being both beautiful and troubling:
And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered. "Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin""How can Satan cast out Satan?" could be rhetorical or a straightforward question that needs an answer. Certainly the scribes have an obvious answer to this that springs directly from their statement. They would come back with the equivalent of what we would today call a false flag operation. Beelzebul designs to deceive by creating the appearance, through Jesus, of doing something good to eventually trade on a generated goodwill to ultimately do evil.
This would appear to be what Jesus addresses next, But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered. Jesus portrays himself as the burglar that ties up Satan, the strong man and an individual human as a "house" or habitation of the evil one.
For some this is troublesome. They want to think of Satan as the burglar. When thinking this way the strong man becomes each one of us - our spiritual selves as strong men in houses. To see this parable in this way it can comment on a current danger. Part of our American soul is tied up in today's national dialog. We are asked by one part of our government and their supporters not to believe in the honesty and intentions of another part of the government and their supporters. The U.S. is currently a house divided against itself as surely as we were divided during the American Civil War.
When Jesus is the burglar in the parable the ending follows the flow of the parable somewhat more closely but there are still the shattering words of judgment, to my ear, as the parable ends:"28) Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; 29) but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin".
Love, hope and judgment. Jesus has certainly promised good news at the beginning of verse 28, but does not allow us to mistake this good news is for the comfortable considering verse 29. Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable is on full display in these two passages. Ours is a God that turns things upside down,
Pastor Mary brought the intricacies of this parable out in a personal story. She told us about a woman who was a panhandler off a freeway exit who came close to her car. After the woman did not get money, she spit on the window of Mary's car. As Pastor Mary looked back she saw the woman sobbing as she turned around, in obvious pain in body, mind and spirit. This triggered a deep compassion in Mary. It would seem the reign of God Jesus keeps talking about is not about maintaining business as usual, which is easy to have happen with panhandlers.
Her personal story highlighted that actually many of our individual spiritual selves may be divided as deeply as our collective American soul. Pastor Mary added she wanted to encounter the woman again, not necessarily to give her the money she was requesting but to roll down the window and make a personal connection.
There is a contradiction (or some might call an exception) between verse 28 and verse 29. I don't know what "blasphemes against the Holy Spirit" means or why this is an eternal sin that cannot be forgiven. I am uncomfortable with anything done or said in our temporal world having eternal consequences if that is what eternal sin means. I am also uncomfortable with a sin that God cannot forgive.
This is not the way the Gospel passage ends however. Words of judgment start this reading but it ends with love and hope, "And looking at those around him, he said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother'" Perhaps the judgment is merely setting up how God will forgive even the eternal sin of blasphemes against the Holy Spirit and once again showing how God graciously will turn our expectations from reading scripture upside down. Perhaps not.
I know this all has something to do with balancing God's compassion and God's judgment, and each age will loose or bind what they will in their generation. I trust and can only pray for God's grace to guide us in what God desires.
OS - Turn it upside down.
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